Rabbi David Wolkenfeld

One of the fun things about Israel is the way in which Jewish culture infiltrates small details of daily life and culture. Instead of using the English idiom, “but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” in Israel one says, מָה עִנְיַן שְמִטָה אֵצֶל הַר סִינַי “what does Shmittah have to do with Mt. Sinai?”

Indeed, what does Shmittah have to do with Mt. Sinai? Rashi opens his comments to this week’s parasha with this question drawing our attention to the curious staging of our parashah:  

וַיְדבֵ֤ר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶ֔ה בְהַ֥ר סִינַ֖י לֵאמֹֽר׃ 

And God spoke to Moshe on Mt. Sinai and said…  

Mt. Sinai has not been mentioned, has not been identified as the location for any communication from God, since the Book of Exodus many chapters earlier. What indeed do the laws of shmittah, the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee Year, the cancellation of debts and the mitzvot of Jewish economic life have to do with Mt. Sinai?  

Rashi poses the question and provides an answer:  

,אֶלָא מַה שְמִטָה נֶאֶמְרו כְלָלותֶיהָ ופְרטותֶיהָ וְדקדוקיהָ מִסִינַי אַף כֻלָן נֶאֶמְרו כְלָלותֵיהֶן וְדקדוקיהֶן מִסִינַי 

Just as the laws of shmittah were communicated, in general and in particular specific details at Sinai, so too were all of the mitzvot communicated in general and in particular specific detail at Sinai.  

Rashi’s answer is not fully satisfying because it isn’t really about the mitzvah of shmittah itself. Any mitzvah could have been selected to teach this point.  

Rav Benny Lau, one of my rabbinic heroes, suggested a different way to reformulate Rashi’s question and suggests a different answer.  

The book of Leviticus, Sefer Vayikra, begins with a call to Moshe:  

וַיִקר֖א אֶל־מֹשֶ֑ה וַיְדבֵ֤ר ה׳ אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מועֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃ 

And God called to Moshe and spoke to him from the Ohel Moed. The setting for this book and the source of God’s instructions to Moshe in this book is the Ohel Moed, the mishkan. Indeed, the entire purpose of the mishkan, according to Ramban – as we’ve discussed before – is the perpetuation of the Har Sinai experience. The mishkan, the ohel moed replaces Har Sinai. So why does Parashat Behar harken back to Har Sinai? What does shemitah have to do with Mt. Sinai? Why is Parashat Behar in the book of Leviticus. It should not be in Sefer Vayikra but rather in Sefer Shmot, in the book of Exodus?  

One possible answer is that Parashat Behar invokes Har Sinai as a bookend. We return to Mt. Sinai and recall Moshe’s first encounter with God on that mountain:  

וַיִסְע֣ו מֵרפִיד֗ים וַיָבֹ֙או֙ מִדבַ֣ר סִינַ֔י וַֽיַחֲנ֖ו בַמִדבָ֑ר וַיִֽחַן־שָ֥ם יִשְראֵ֖ל נֶ֥גֶד הָהָֽר׃ 

ומֹשֶ֥ה עָלָ֖ה אֶל־הָא-ֱלהִ֑ים וַיִקר֨א אֵלָ֤יו ה׳ מִן־הָהָ֣ר לֵאמֹ֔ר כֹ֤ה תֹאמַר֙ לְבֵ֣ית יַעֲק֔ב וְתַגֵ֖יד לִבְנֵ֥י יִשְראֵֽל׃ …וְאַתֶ֧ם תִהְיו־לִ֛י מַמְלֶ֥כֶת כֹהֲנִ֖ים וְג֣וי קד֑וש אֵ֚לֶה הַדְבָר֔ים אֲשֶ֥ר תְדבֵ֖ר אֶל־בְנֵ֥י יִשְראֵֽל׃

In Exodus 19 we read:  

And they traveled from Refidim and came to the wilderness of Sinai and they encamped in the wilderness in front of the Mountain. And Moshe went up to God and God called to him from the Mountain saying: Thus  shall you say to the House of Jacob and say to the Children of Israel…You shall be for me as a Nation of Priests and a Holy People. These are the things that you shall say to the Children of Israel…  

Har Sinai is the place where we are told that the goal of our relationship with God is our transformation into a מַמְלֶ֥כֶת כֹהֲנִ֖ים וְג֣וי ק֑דוש a nation of priests and a holy people. After dozens of mitzvot about all aspects of life and every vector of existence, the Torah returns us to Har Sinai in Parashat Behar because these mitzvot complete the process and are definitional to what it means to be Jewish in ways that recall the foundational moment of first standing before God at Sinai. 

Judaism is a religion but is not just a religion. Mitzvot are vehicles for personal growth and spiritual achievement but that is not all that they are for. Mitzvot are not only about raising well adjusted children or for cultivating happy marriages. Hopefully all of those things can happen and mitzvot can certainly help us with those goals. Torah study can help us navigate our lives to reach those goals.  

But the Torah and the purpose of the Jewish People is about something beyond those personal and family goals. We are meant to become מַמְלֶ֥כֶת כֹהֲנִ֖ים וְג֣וי ק֑דוש. This means that our national life itself is meant to be sacred. Our interactions with one another and the web of responsibilities that we build around one another must be distinctively Jewish and sacred. Our relationship to the land itself upon which our national life is built is also distinctive and meant to be essential to our collective identity as Jews.  

This is what shemittah and yovel, the Sabbatical year and Jubilee accomplish. One out of seven years agricultural labor comes to a halt and the land owner and the hired laborer are equal sojourners on God’s Earth. Every fifty years the Jubilee is a reset button on social-economic divisions as debts are canceled, servants are freed of their responsibilities, and land sales are undone, wealth accumulation is reversed, and each family returns to its tribal inheritance and is given a fresh start on life.  

Just as Shabbat is a rest from competition and acquisition and construction for the individual so that we acknowledge that we live in a world created by God. Shmittah and Yovel are a national rest from economic struggle, greed, and wealth accumulation, so that we acknowledge that our nation was created with a special  relationship with God as a מַמְלֶ֥כֶת כֹהֲנִ֖ים וְג֣וי ק֑דוש.

In a globalized economy, Jews do not have the ability to craft a distinctively Jewish economic or agricultural system. We cannot do it in Israel and we certainly cannot do it in America.  

But there are ways to build our Jewish communities that are cognizant of the ways that we are bound to one another by economic ties and that those ties are at the very heart of what it means to be Jewish.  

Two examples:  

Rav Chaim Soloveitchik slept in a hallway of his shul for weeks following a devastating fire in his community Brisk, in Lithuania. He was involved in finding housing to those who had been made homeless by the fire and he couldn’t fathom sleeping in his own bed in his own home while so many in his community no longer had a home. His sense of collective solidarity was so intense that he couldn’t enjoy the warmth and comfort of his own private home.  

Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffmann, the great halakhic scholar of German Jewry until his death in 1920, ruled, in his collection of teshuvot called Melamed l’Ho’il that it was forbidden for parents to keep their children home from public school on Shabbat and instead hire a private tutor to cover the missed material. If parents acted were allowed to act in this way, only the wealthy would be able to hire private tutors and the result would be only working class Jewish children in school on Shabbat and they would not have the critical mass of Jewish classmates to reinforce their commitment to refrain from writing.  

Here we see an awareness of how Jewish education and Jewish life more generally is experienced differently by people in different economic classes and a concomitant commitment to ensure that the Jewish community structure itself in such a way that everyone is able to participate.  

We have fallen so far from this commitment. The recent Pew study of Jewish Americans showed Modern Orthodox Jews are the wealthiest segment of the American Jewish community. We should be proud that members of our community are, on average, a financially successful cohort of a financially successful broader Jewish community. But that pride needs to be tempered with great concern for those who are priced out our neighborhoods and our schools. That pride needs to be tempted with sensitivity for those who do live in our neighborhoods and whose children do attend our schools, but who silently struggle to keep up with the standard of living established by those with greater wealth. We might not be aware of friends and neighbors who feel marginalized because their incomes are lower, or because they struggle with debt, or who shoulder a financial burden to care for infirm relatives.  

I only recently was sensitized to something that I myself wrote and shared with this community. Just weeks ago our shul Passover guide reminded people to clear out any hametz stored in office desks. How is that experienced by someone who doesn’t work in an office but works in a factory? In a similar vein, every Jewish organization, including this one has a “young professionals” division. How can we be sure to also include those who are not professionals but laborers or artists?

We should be proud of our successes and we should also take pride in our stellar schools, and the beautiful commitment to Torah and mitzvot that we see all around us. But to live up to our potential as מַמְלֶ֥כֶת כֹהֲנִ֖ים וְג֣וי ק֑דוש requires collective consciousness and a commitment to build our community in such a way that everyone is included and nobody is left behind.